Early puberty: Crazy hormones and great expectations
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First, a bit of facts. There are three main periods of our life: when we are kids, puberty, and the adult life. Every one of them is significant but puberty, being between the two, defines us in a most profound way.
Some time around the age of 11 in girls and 12 in boys, puberty starts. That age may vary and it is accepted that girls between 8 and 13, and boys between 9 and 14, enter puberty. The process takes about 4 years and it is important that everything inside these time lines is perfectly OK.
Physical signs are the most obvious when puberty starts. It also easy to conclude that puberty make a final difference between us: some of us become women and some men. From that point on, we have different but compatible tasks in life: together we are meant to extend the human race. We do that together, but in our different ways.
For example, a man will fight a bear to save the family because he is physically more able to do that, and he's often totally insensible to some kid's needs. A woman, on the other hand, will wake up when she fells baby moves in its bad, but the fight against the bear will not be so successful.
It is important to have that distinction in mind: we are compatible with our roles in life.
If you wonder why female athletes can't compete with males, the answer is simple: puberty activates processes that shape female and male bodies differently with different hormones, and there are major differences between female and male skeletal muscles including differences in energy metabolism, fiber type composition, and contractile speed.
To put is more simply, male muscles have a higher capacity for anaerobic metabolism and generate a higher maximum power output than female muscles. Female muscles during repeated contractions are generally more fatigue resistant and recover faster but while 30 to 35 of woman's body weight are muscles, in men 40 to 50 percent of weight are muscles. Now you know why it's not fair for men to compete in women's sport.
But that's all a physical dimension. Puberty affects us mentally too, and that's where real problems can arise.
Puberty is a final stage in the development of intelligence. It is the time when an adolescent needs to establish control of conscious over the instinctive, what is allowed over what is desired. Our instinct may tell us "rage," "condemn," our consciousness says let's sit and talk. We may want to take shortcuts, but we make a choice from a range of possibilities.
Puberty serves as a period of defining ourselves mentally. Along with a body, our minds change and in that process we start to think like adults and find our place in the society.
If those processes are not going hand in hand, then we have a problem: a physically developed person with a mind of a child.
But even bigger problem is precocious puberty. This is when a kid's body starts to change too soon. It's not that the process starts early and will finish early, it lead to a range of problems and health conditions.
Now, when the brain starts the production of a gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), it travels to the pituitary gland and the production of hormones in the ovaries for females (estrogen) and the testicles for males (testosterone) starts. Those hormones develop male and female sexual characteristics.
The cause of precocious puberty often can't be found but we know there are two types of early puberty: central precocious puberty and peripheral precocious puberty.
In the case of central precocious puberty, the process starts too soon, the timing of the steps are normal but there's no medical problems and in some cases no reason for the early puberty that we can see.
In some cases, the reasons for the early start are: a tumor in the central nervous system, a defect in the brain present at birth, radiation to the brain or spinal cord, McCune-Albright syndrome which is a rare genetic disease, a group of genetic disorders involving abnormal hormone production by the adrenal glands, and hypothyroidism.
Precocious puberty is less common and it occurs without the hormone GnRH that normally triggers the start of puberty. The cause is release of estrogen or testosterone into the body and there are some reasons for that.
Reasons are same as central precocious puberty, but in boys peripheral precocious puberty may also be caused by a tumor in the cells that make sperm or in the cells that make testosterone, and a rare disorder gonadotropin-independent familial sexual precocity.
Now, there are some factors that increase a risk of precocious puberty: being a girl, obesity, being exposed to sex hormones in medication or dietary supplements, or radiation therapy of the central nervous system.
A possible complication of precocious puberty is short height. Because bones in such kids mature more quickly than normal, they often stop growing earlier than other kids and remain shorter. There are also a higher risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and allergies of various kinds.
Precocious puberty is particularly hard for girls. Boys suffer from anxiety and external symptoms sometimes are "adult behavior" as smoking, but girls suffer from depressive disorders, substance use disorders, eating disorders, disruptive behavior disorders, an engagement in early sexual activities. In fact, depression is the clearest link between early puberty and girls. For many women, puberty is a key period in the development of depression.
When children develop early, other people, both kids and adults, make wrong assumptions about what they are capable of because the general population often thinks that the physical look means the same as the mental development. In other words, kids looks older but their social and emotional development in on a child's level.
The society, parents, often grant more freedom to kids that look older than their chronological age can stand. From the boys, "Act like a man", to girls, "You're old enough to have a family", the expectations are high and that may be fatal. Add to that the fact that young people want to fit in, and the picture gets even worse if they are different from their peers.
Now, some kids with early puberty will go through it easily but they must have a support in the society and in the family.
But, what is worrisome is the fact that the average age of a girl's first period was about 16 just one hundred years ago and today, it's closer to 13. What's more, it seems that the start of puberty shifts three months in a decade, which is extremely fast.
It is not unusual to see a boy in the U.S. that looks like a 30 year old man, and a fully developed woman in her 20s who is in fact 14 years old girl.
On the other hand, it is interesting that average age of early breast development in the western world is 10 to 11, and 10 to 13 in Africa. So, although we don't have a clear evidence, we may came to a conclusion using a healthy brain: in countries where food is not so much processed, and where chemicals are not so widely used, puberty and kids' development is more normal. ■